


The Kyber Bleeds

by SupremeLeaderRen13



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Smut, Force Bond (Star Wars), Movie: Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Star-crossed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-12
Updated: 2018-04-12
Packaged: 2019-04-22 01:33:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14297847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SupremeLeaderRen13/pseuds/SupremeLeaderRen13
Summary: Rey and Kylo share an unexpected night together before meeting Snoke.What happens when you don't get the answer you were looking for?





	The Kyber Bleeds

**Author's Note:**

> May the Force be with you, always.

“Sir, the ship you are expecting is inbound. Scanners just picked it up.” The trooper’s modulated voice gave nothing away, but Kylo could feel his anxiousness permeating the air around them. He wondered what they thought of him now, stripped of his helmet and mystique. Did they see, as he hoped, the battle hardened Jedi Killer? Or did they see what Snoke saw, a frightened boy playing at being a monster? The shame was so heavy he felt like it would pull him to the floor.  
“Sir?” Kylo was suddenly convinced that the stormtrooper knew exactly what a failure he was, and how nervous he felt. He couldn’t take the thought of this faceless nobody mocking him. Instinctively, he lifted the soldier into the air and used the Force to toss him into the wall. There was no quiver in the Force, so Kylo knew he wasn’t dead. Still, the relief at not being looked at was great.  
Then it was back, that odd connection between him and the scavenger. Pulled taut like a bowstring, it made every nerve ending in his body stand at attention. He was going to have to leave the observation deck and face her. Before, he would have strode in confidently, determined to obliterate this last sign of his own weakness. Now…he didn’t know. His preoccupation with the girl had moved from curiosity to something else. He swallowed. She was almost here.  
It didn’t take long to find two other troopers to accompany him to the bay. They stood slightly behind him, awaiting orders as the small launch pod coasted onto the ship’s floor. Kylo realized he was holding his breath and tried to exhale. She was a prisoner, he reminded himself. A prisoner and his ticket out of his bondage and onto the throne. A nobody, a garbage picker—  
_Rey._ The exhaust fumes cleared from the viewport of the shuttle, and there she was. Her hair was loose around her shoulders, framing her face which had lost some of its tan but none of the freckles since she’d left Jakku. Her smirked at the way she had crunched herself into the shuttle, like a child getting ready to begin an ill-advised pod race. The corners of her mouth flicked upwards in response to him.  
To him? This made something swoop in his chest, and he stepped back to allow the troopers forward. The smile descended rapidly into betrayal, and he was afraid for a second that he’d have to fight her. Instead, she rolled her eyes and merely looked miffed. Taking this as a good sign, he pushed past one of the troopers and offered her his hand. She took it, eyeing him suspiciously as he lifted her out of the pod.  
“Prisoners of the First Order are required to submit to a search.” Rey shot him a look that clearly said _do I have to_ , but extended her arms and spun in a slow circle. Kylo choked back a laugh as the troopers looked at each other before patting her down.  
“Any weapons,” one asked brusquely.  
“No,” Rey replied.  
Her thigh holster was empty, but the second trooper wrestled a lightsaber out of the swaths of clothing she was wrapped in. Kylo snatched it from his soldier and glared at Rey.  
“Bit of old canister,” she said lightly, shrugging. The trooper turned to look at Kylo, clearly afraid this idiot resistance girl was going to get them all killed. The second soldier clapped binders around Rey’s wrists, at which point she shot him a look that Kylo was very glad not to be on the receiving end of.  
“Should we take her to holding now, sir?” It couldn’t have been clearer that they really wanted away from this weird scavenger and the Jedi Killer.  
“No,” Kylo said, a little louder than he meant to. “No, I’ll take care of it.”  
“I am not an it,” Rey mumbled. He ignored her.  
“Go on.” The soldiers saluted and left. Kylo had no doubt they would break into a run as soon as they were out of sight.  
“We’re not going to see Snoke,” Rey asked. Kylo put his hand in the small of her back and pushed her forward.  
“He’s not here.” That wasn’t true, strictly speaking, but he had made it clear that he did not want to be disturbed today. Nothing, not even the promise of Luke Skywalker’s death, was worth pushing that. They kept walking, Kylo steering slightly, through the ship until they started passing less personnel in the hallways. Rey’s head swiveled left and right, taking everything in. Kylo tilted the hand that he had on her back slightly, mostly to convince himself that she was really there.  
“Ben,” she started. He slapped his gloved hand over her mouth, which he realized too late was a mistake. She bit down as hard as she could, and he hand to shake her to get her to let go.  
“Don’t say that name here,” he hissed. He flexed his fingers, hoping that he still had skin where she’d bitten him. Or at least that the flesh hadn’t detached.  
“Why not? _Ben Solo_ , Ben, Ben, Ben. We need to get out of here—hey!” She shrieked as he clapped his hand over his lips again and dragged her through a set of doors.  
The lights automatically flickered on in response to their presence. Simple, normal movement was usually enough, but Rey made sure that the room couldn’t miss them. Pissed off that he’d shushed her again, she banged her heels against his shins and clubbed him hard in the side with her binders. The girl fought like a wild cat, all spit and viciousness. He dropped her onto the floor in a heap, more out of self-preservation than anything. She was stronger than she’d been before.  
He'd barely had time to back away before she was on her feet, spitting a piece of hair out of her mouth. “You stupid, cowardly nerf herder! You brought me here to kill me, didn’t you?” She stomped over to him, and he silently admired her ability to intimidate at what looked like half his height. “Give me my lightsaber. Give it back to me!” She punctuated this last word with a threatening raise of her binders.  
“Stop—STOP.” He used the Force to gently push her away from him. “Kriff, I’m not going to kill you. Calm down, scavenger.” Once he was quite sure she wasn’t going to rush at him again, he sat down at his table and took out Anakin Skywalker’s lightsaber. “This is mine.”  
Rey hooked the second chair with her ankle and sat in it. “No, _that_ is yours.” She pointed with her foot to the holstered saber on his belt. His gaze lingered on her leg, and he turned his head. “This one chose me. Over you.” She leaned towards him, and her hair swung forward. Kylo couldn’t get over the realness of her, the way her brows furrowed in concentration, how her hair still smelled like the sea. “Why?”  
“I don’t know,” he told her baldly. “Kyber crystals bond with individuals. No one knows exactly why.” He turned the lightsaber in his hands. “My master has a theory.”  
“Please tell me what the all-wise and powerful Snoke says about this.” Her tone was sarcastic, but there was a kernel of interest underneath it. He could feel how desperately she longed to understand all of this. Clearly, Luke hadn’t been able to give her what she needed. Of course he couldn’t. Old, violent anger stirred inside him.  
“Kyber crystals are attuned to the Force, and it is through the Force that they find their individual with which they create a bond. They can change with their bonded match.”  
“Did yours?”  
“Yes.” He cleared his throat. “Blue, then orange.” Drop it, he prayed. Please forget this. Don’t ask.  
“Why’s it red now?”  
Damn it. “I bled my crystal.”  
“Bled…”  
“Kyber crystals inherently don’t like the dark side. When they come into contact with it, they cry, they…bleed. It thinks it’s been stolen, you know?” He removed his saber from his waist.  
“Your crystal thinks Ben Solo is dead.”  
“My crystal serves _Kylo Ren_ ,” he emphasized. He watched her lip wobble as she considered this horrible, visible proof that Ben Solo had died, or at least changed so drastically that his kyber could feel and mourn it. Whatever she’d been expecting to encounter, it wasn’t this.  
“What does that have to do with this lightsaber?” She reached for the Skywalker saber and he put his gloved hand over hers, stopping her from touching it.  
“My master suspects that the kyber in this lightsaber went to you, because you were in the light then. You had a pure, desperate need and something about that made you more familiar to that kyber crystal.”  
“Would it still choose me over you?”  
“I guess that would depend on whether or not you’re going to murder me with it.”  
“Not right now,” she said quietly. Her eyes roamed over the scar she’d given him, and he swung his head forward self-consciously, letting his hair fall over it.  
“Ben?” Her voice was smaller now. “In a Force bond between two people…” He looked up, all attempt to hide his scar forgotten. “…if one of them were to...die in the eyes of the other, would the other person bleed?”  
He tunneled into her hazel eyes, and he could read the real question there.  
_Are you going to leave me, Ben? Will I be like the broken crystal in your lightsaber, raw and angry over the loss of Ben Solo?_  
“I don’t know,” he whispered. And he didn’t. He wished more than anything he could tell her differently, but that was the way of a lot of the things in his life. Whatever most people needed from him, he couldn’t—wouldn’t—do it.  
She brought her clenched fists down on the table, and the binders clanged against the metal. “That’s not good enough!”  
His temper burst forth, coating him in a hot, nasty feeling. “I don’t know what you want from me, Scavenger! If you had come with me on Star Killer, instead of trying to be noble—“  
“I don’t _want_ to be like you!” They both stood at the same time, chairs screeching. She knocked everything off the table in one fell swoop. “You wretched, murdering coward—“  
“Me, a coward? You were going to murder me while I was disarmed—“  
“You were fighting to kill!”  
“I was not, I never was!” There was a pause while Kylo mentally kicked himself for admitting that. He switched tactics. “You’re so naïve, thinking that everyone will fall into line with your little fantasies…” Kylo slammed his fist into the wall. “That’s not how this works!”  
Rey slid between the wall and his chest, preventing him from hitting it again. “It could if you’d let it, if you’d just let me…”  
“You have to let me teach you before you die for your asinine faith in people!”  
“I’m trying to save YOU,” she bellowed. The hanging light over their heads swayed dangerously as her anger trembled in the Force. Kylo was stunned, shocked into silence by her anger. He shook his head.  
“I never asked for that.”  
“You never ask for anything!” She stood on her toes and looped her bound arms around his neck. He briefly registered the shock of cold steel on his skin before her lips touched his and he lost himself entirely.  
This was nothing like the quick, chaste kisses he’d experienced in the academy, where he had been much more interested in his rapidly developing powers than girls. No, Rey’s mouth was warm and full, and it felt like it had been made to meet his. She slipped her tongue into his mouth, and oh stars, he liked that too. Kylo thought dimly of the piles of dusty books shoved under his bed, one of which talked about some ancient concept called the Nectar of the Gods. Whatever holiness it had tried to convey had nothing on the taste of her. He fisted one of his hands in her loose hair to pull her head back, desperate to kiss her more deeply, to have more of it—  
“No.” She leaned forward on her toes again and unhooked her arms from around his neck. Her body pressed against his while she did this and Kylo thought he might combust.  
“No?”  
“Yes.” Her mouth was set in a straight line, but her eyes were bright. “Not unless there’s something you want to _ask_ for, Ben?” He could count every freckle on her flushed face, and was suddenly desperate to find out if she had more.  
“Nothing I want to ask for, no,” he said, and then shoved her against the wall. She didn’t fight him as he raised the binders gently over her head and held them there with the Force. It took no effort to maintain the hold, which became as secondary as breathing when he returned his attention to Rey. He kissed her again, but he was now possessed with an insatiable thirst, and he brought his lips to her ear and then down the length of her neck. He slid his hands up and under her shirt, gauging her reaction.  
“If you’re going to do that, at least take the gloves off.” Rey sounded breathless. He sighed, but he tugged on the fingers of his glove, peeling off the left and then the right. He hesitated, then pressed his hands against her skin again.  
Live wires. That’s what it felt like. It almost made him jerk back, but he tried to breathe through it. He wanted so badly to explore this connection between them. Rey leaned her head on his shoulder.  
“It doesn’t hurt, it just feels…”  
“Strange,” Kylo agreed. His hands moved in experimental circles, across her ribs and to her back. It was easier, once the initial shock had passed, to ignore the spark created by the connection.  
Rey wiggled her shoulders. “Take the binders off.” They fell from her wrists so quickly that Kylo had to stop them with the Force to keep them from knocking her in the head. At this point, she could have told him to cut his own hand off, and he’d do it while kneeling at her feet. That thought scared him, and he pulled away from her.  
“Ben,” Rey said coaxingly. She crossed the room to his bed. “Kriff, do you fit in here?”  
“In a manner of speaking,” he said stiffly. He tapped a panel on the wall and the bed’s length increased another meter. When he looked up, she was watching him intently. He ducked his head and his hair swung forward again.  
“Stop,” Rey said. “Why do you keep doing that?”  
“Doing what?”  
“Hiding your face. You didn’t strike me as the shy type the night we talked about your fa—.” She stopped herself, looking confused and hurt. “The night we talked about what happened.”  
“ _You_ crept in on me in _my_ quarters. I had nothing to be embarrassed about.”  
“I can’t control the connection.”  
“Can’t you?” It didn’t escape Kylo’s notice that she might very well be playing him right now. But for some reason, he didn’t think so.  
“Come here.” Rey patted the bed beside her. “I want to see you…again…like _that_.” Now her face was brilliantly red, and he was in control again. Kylo smirked.  
“As you wish.” He discarded his belt on the floor beside him and pulled his tunic over his head. Now he was bare from the waist up, apart from his armguards. She reached out, but instead of touching his exposed skin, she pushed his hair behind his ears. Embarrassed, knowing what that must look like, he shook it back out.  
“Stop!” She slapped his thigh. “Let me see you.” This was said so softly he almost didn’t catch it. With both hands, she smoothed his hair back and tucked it behind his ears. Kylo closed his eyes while she traced the shape of his ears, down the ridge of his brows, his cheekbones, and even the scar she’d given him.  
“One question,” she said. He opened his eyes. “Who’s with me right now? Ben or Kylo?”  
“Ben.” He’d answered without thinking. His master would be furious to hear him use that name. It had been so long since he’d thought of himself as that person that it shocked him to hear it out loud. But here, tonight, for this girl the Force had bound him to—he was Ben.  
“Okay,” Rey said. “Okay.”  
For the rest of the night, Ben thought about the stars. The open viewport bathed Rey’s skin in white starlight, highlighting the constellations of freckles on her body. He slid away the clothes that hid this beauty and, like the first men to chart the galaxy, became determined to know every inch. He brought his lips to the hollow at the base of her throat, slid his nose along the side of her breast, intent on worshipping every minor piece that made up the constellation of his goddess.  
Stars are fickle things, often full of unstable gaseous energy, and Ben sought the source of Rey’s light. He first found it when he took her nipple in his mouth and she arched her back for him. His star could speak, he realized, and he endeavored to please her again. She guided his head towards her stomach, and knelt between her legs like the most reverent astronomer. Ben hooked his arms around her thighs and tasted her at their apex, realizing that what he’d tasted on her lips earlier had barely scratched the surface of what she had to offer. When she collapsed in on herself, the supernova whispered his name.  
“Ben.”  
He climbed on top of her, and she led him gently, but with an underlying urgency that still spoke of need. Their bodies fit together as though the Force had designed them for this very purpose. Knowing the fragility of stars, Ben moved slowly, unwilling to hurt her. But this woman was made of starlight, and she raked her nails in his back and hair, anything to communicate that she would not falter or break. She would, however, yield and when they both gave in, it was Ben who had her name on his lips.  
Rey held him as he shuddered, whispering his name over and over again.  
“Ben, Ben. My Ben.”  
The stars smiled on them.  
A few hours later, Rey woke to find him staring out of the viewport, still looking at the stars.  
“Ben?” She stroked his hair. “It’s beautiful, right? I guess you get used to it if you’re on-ship constantly, but it’s still—“  
“The thing about stars is they’re mortal. They have an end.”  
Rey was quiet for a long time before she spoke again.  
“Are we going to die tomorrow?”  
“Maybe.” He didn’t turn around. “What if I can’t be Ben Solo anymore? Would you love Kylo Ren?”  
“Ben…”  
“Or,” he said, still staring hollowly at the galaxy. “Will your kyber bleed?” The bond quivered between them.  
She didn’t answer him. She didn’t have to.  
His star was a black hole.  
And it would devour them both.


End file.
